My Words Are Delicious

October 10, 2004

A couple of months ago I poked a little fun at a friend of mine because he walked straight into a pole while admiring the beauty of a man he saw while strolling down the street one day. When he told me the story, I almost fell off my couch I thought it was so ridiculously funny. "I would never do anything like that," I thought to myself.

I often think thoughts like that. I have an enormous ego and I truly believe that the world would be a much better place if people either thought exactly as I do or if they did exactly what I want. Please stop curling your lip at me; we all feel like this sometimes. Why else would we roll our eyes with impatience when the overworked barista takes a whole three and a half seconds longer than we consider necessary to serve the person in front of us, forcing us to address the inconsiderate wretch in icy turns and rethink the 25¢ tip we were generously going to leave. (Oooooooo! Twenty-five cents! How generous!) We really are a petty breed.

So, I've talked about my giant ego and I've laughed at a friend who found himself in a particular predicament. Where could I be going with this?

Today as AlefAlef and I were walking though his new lobby, which, incidentally, looks as if Kandinsky were trying to paint someone being violently ill, but somehow let things get out of hand, when who should walk out of the elevator we were waiting for and stride across the lobby but Blair Underwood! Well, it wasn't really Blair Underwood, but he may as well as have been.

Because I am full of intellect and higher learning, I intelligently and entirely rationally turned my entire body around to follow him with my gaze as he walked out the front door. Once he was gone from view, I turned back and whooooomph! walked straight into the now-closed elevator door. I rubbed my forehead to regain my equilibrium while abstract, multi-coloured Kandinsky birds tweeted around my head, but no sympathy was to be received from AlefAlef. He just raised an eyebrow and shook his head, walking into another elevator that opened in front of him. How humiliating it must have been for him to be associated with a fool such as me.

And to return to my original point, I think that the world would be a happier place if everyone were able to make a public fool of themselves occasionally. A little humorous humiliation is great for the soul, even of the body – like one's forehead – suffers.